1. Don’t try to compete with a super-rich host. You may have to sing for your supper but you are not expected to pay for it. Their ‘people’ will have ensured that everything they need for the purposes of entertaining you is already in place. Your 360g of Marrons Glacés (£64, Fortnum & Mason) will be surplus to requirements and will probably be given directly on by them to a member of staff.
Any herb in a pot bought from a petrol station when your host already has a greenhouse full. Chocolate penises. Just don’t
2. To broke students and underprivileged friends, of course bring wine – particularly if you are worried about being made ill by low-quality stuff they are likely to serve.
3. Wanderpreissen, literally a wandering present, is an expression used in Germany to denote gifts which smack of impersonal re-gifting e.g. scented candles, panettone, stale soaps. A friend who gave a dinner for 50 people on her own 50th birthday received no fewer than 20 scented candles (which gave her low self-esteem).
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